Foreign tourists find U.S. a bargain
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AP 20 December, 2003
Sylvia Camarca, a student from Italy, is used to stretching her funds when she visits New York,
staying with friends and eating on the cheap at ethnic restaurants and hot dog stands. This time, as she shops for discount shoes, postcards and Yankees hats, she's noticing that her money is going even further than she thought it would.
"I just found it cheaper here than I expected," Camarca said as she walked past Tiffany's on Fifth Avenue.
Like hundreds of thousands of other foreign tourists descending on the United States, she is benefiting from the weakening dollar - the other side of the experience of U.S. tourists, who are being squeezed in their travels abroad.
In recent days, the dollar has fallen to an all-time low against the euro, an 11-year low against the pound and a three-year low against the yen as investors and traders respond to concerns about the U.S. economy.
Some visitors have come to the United States specifically to capitalize on the situation. Linda Meyer, an Australian from Sydney, said the "excellent" exchange rate motivated her to take a U.S. vacation. "I can afford to be here," she said while shopping for Christmas gifts at a Sephora cosmetics store in Los Angeles. "Before, it was a bit out of reach."
Meyer said she had found that a day at Disneyland was "a lot cheaper than a day at a theme park in Australia," where she would expect to spend 100 Australian dollars more.
Wolfgang Schmitt of Saarbrücken, Germany, stood with his wife, Sandra, in Rockefeller Center in New York, where they were showing their two children the center's famous Christmas tree. They had planned to come to New York regardless of the exchange rate, he said: "It was a small dream of ours." But they were happily surprised, they said, by the rates at their hotel.
Nadia Allen of Manchester, England, a flight attendant, said in Chicago that her most recent flight to the United States had been abuzz with passengers talking about their increased buying power. As for herself, said Allen, 33, "I'm going to shop, shop and shop some more."
At the Quincy Market in Boston, Sheila Hutchinson, 28, of Cumbria, England, was happy with her $89 purchase of a pink cashmere Ann Taylor sweater that she said would have cost $150 in England. "When you look around the shops, you think, 'That's actually a lot cheaper,'" she said.
In Los Angeles, Gary Shadbolt, a college student from England who was in town for two days as part of an around-the-world tour, was toting a shopping bag full of clothes. "It's just a lucky coincidence that I came here during a time when the U.K. pound is at its strongest ever," he said.
Siegfried Klabunde, a retired policeman from Giessen, Germany, said in New York that he and his fiancée, Beate Hildebrandt, were staying for a week in Philadelphia, with side trips to New York and Washington, because of the exchange rate. "I was very happy, very surprised to be paying $57 a night for a hotel right there in downtown Philadelphia," he said in New York. "Also, the jeans we buy here are 50 percent what we pay in Germany." On the other hand, some tourists said they hadn't noticed any good fortune. "Everything in New York is expensive," said Alessio Perrotti, a hematologist from Rome who was watching the ice skaters at Rockefeller Center. He said he had found a good air fare but attributed that to connections in the industry. Everything else, he said, was more expensive than in Rome.
"We just paid $2.25 for these hot dogs," he said. "Each."
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Tourism to provide development push to Haiti
Haiti can capitalize on its natural and cultural resources to get the country back on the world tourism map, thereby contributing to its overall recovery and development. This was the main message of (02/11/2012)
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